2016 and once again, the tech world just descended on Austin to participate in one of the largest tech events on the planet – SXSW Interactive. The buzz this year at the festival was focused on anything VR. All over Austin, we’d hear about VR this and VR that with an occasional “machine learning” thrown in here and there on the streets lined with sleek, shiny brand activations . While this year’s talk of the town may have been VR, one of the most consistent events is the annual SXSW Accelerator, which sees 48 startups finalists from hundreds of globaly entries compete for prizes including cash, gifts, tickets to next year’s event – and most importantly, a chance to capture the heralded SXSW spotlight.
Since 2009, the Accelerator has been a fertile ground for some of the most creative new ideas in technology which have gone on to raise a total of $2.6B in funding. This year, expert judges including David Aronoff, David S. Rose, Paige Craig, Hamet Watt, and Kay Koplovitz qualified the field of applicants from six categories including Enterprise and Smart Data, Entertainment and Content, Health and Wearables, Innovative World Technologies, Payment and Fintech, and of course Virtual Reality.
The last company featured was the belle of the ball at this year’s interactive.
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE WINNERS OF THE SXSW ACCELERATOR
ParkNav
Enterprise and Smart Data
Founded in 2011, ParkNav, currently based out of San Francisco, is a real time predictive analytics engine that provides on-street parking data availability in over 40 major US cities. The company counts automotive, fleet, real estate, and internet companies as its customers and has now embedded their real time data into navigation systems.
PopUp Play
Entertainment and Content
Founded in 2014, PopUp Play, the hometown favorite based in Austin, is the startup that is focused on getting children to spend time both offline and online by allowing them to design playhouses within an app and then later seeing their digital creations come to fruition in the form of a real life playhouse. With children increasingly spending time interacting with iPads and other digital devices, this startup is poised to ensure they actual spend time playing in the real world without the aid of a device.
MUrgency
Health and Wearable
Founded in San Francisco in 2014, MUrgency is modernizing emergency response systems. The company’s mobile platform connects those that need emergency response with family and friends, medical and rescue professionals, and other users of the app for a variety of use cases.
Rorus
Innovative World
Founded in Pittsburgh in 2014, Rorus has a built a point of use filter pack for carrying and instantly purifying water for humanitarian relief applications. Coming out of CMU and the AlphaLab Gear accelerator program, the company’s technology uses nanotechnology to remove biological and chemical contaminants found in water to live true to its mission statement “Everyone deserves clean water”.
Chroma.fund
Payment and Fintech
Chroma.fund, based out of Portland and graduates of Techstars, is a block chain based secondary market and exchange for trading privately held companies. As uncertainty over startups and privately-held investments increases in the future, liquidity is the name of the game and this one solution to provide not only liquidity but also access to capital thanks to the JOBS act and the FAST act.
Splash
Virtual Reality
Virtual reality was all over SXSW this year and Berlin-based Splash stole the show. The company has built an application that allows users to capture 360 degree video using only your cell phone and view it in VR.
